Alice Cooper believes The Beatles would have reunited if John Lennon hadn’t been murdered.
The ‘Poison’ hitmaker had Sir Paul McCartney, 81, and Lennon in his infamous Hollywood Vampires drinking club – which shares a name with his supergroup with Johnny Depp, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, and more – and he believes the pals would have reformed the ‘Yesterday’ group if the ‘Woman’ hitmaker hadn’t been assassinated outside his apartment in New York City on 8 December 1980, a decade after the legendary band split acrimoniously.
Asked if he thinks they would have reunited, Alice told Ohio’s QFM96: “Absolutely. Here’s the thing about them. When they were after each other’s throats, when it came to the breakup and all that stuff, if anybody in the Vampires back in those days – that was our drinking club – if anybody said anything bad about Paul, John would take a swing at you, because that was his best friend.
“If anybody said anything about John to Paul, Paul would walk out of the room. He’d just walk out. Because you are not allowed to talk about their best friends. They were best friends no matter what was going on in the whole thing.”
Alice, 75, suggested Lennon wanted to make their music “more political” and that McCartney wasn’t keen.
He added: “One went one way, and one went the other. I think John wanted to be more political. Paul was not into that that much.”
In 2021, McCartney admitted he hates the misconception that he broke up The Beatles.
The ‘Let It Be’ hitmaker shared how he “only recently” got over claims he split up the group – which also featured Sir Ringo Starr, 83, and the late George Harrison.
During a talk with poet Paul Muldoon – with whom he has collaborated on ‘The Lyrics, 1956 to the present’ book – at the Royal Festival Hall in London, he was asked what the biggest misconception was about being Paul McCartney.
He replied: “That I had broken The Beatles up … so I lived with that because once a headline is out there it sticks. That was a big one that I’ve only finally just got over.”
The former Wings star also revealed his regret that he never told Lennon he loved him and said it was “miraculous” that The Beatles had found each other.
He said: “The four of us miraculously found each other. We grew up together. It’s like walking up a staircase and we’ve always been side by side on that staircase. I’m like a fan. I just remember how great it was to work with him and how great he was. Because you are not just messing around, you are not singing with Joe Bloggs you are singing with John Lennon.
“It’s very true. You say that I loved him and as 17-year-old Liverpool kids you could never say that. It just wasn’t done. So I never really said, ‘John, love you mate’ I never got around to it so now it’s great to know how much I love this man.”